WORKING IN THE DOCK – WILLEM DE ZWART

Willem de Zwart - Werklui aan het werk in een dok - Liquid Sky Gallery

An extraordinarily colorful watercolor by Willem De Zwart, which shows several workers working in a dock. As a representative of the 'Tachtigers' (painters around 1880), Willem de Zwart shows a scene that did not seem very obvious in the past. Due to the explosive population growth in the cities around 1870, the 'Tachtigers' increasingly emphasized the consequences this had for both the cities and the workers who made this growth possible.
Willem de Zwart has captured this zeitgeist in an extraordinary way in this work.
The arrangement of the sawn tree trunks and planks gives the work a certain speed, this is stengthened by the very smooth and confident way in which the tree on the right is worked out. The light blue sky and the heavily lit background not only give this work a lot of depth, but also a very nice color balance.

Artist: Willem de Zwart (1862 - 1931)
Dimensions: 24 x 31.5 cm
Signed: Bottom left
Material: Watercolor on paper

Price: 3.900 EUR

Bio:

Willem de Zwart (1862 - 1931) was born in The Hague, where he also died. In 1876 he went to study at the Royal Academy of Art (The Hague). He received painting lessons from Jacob Maris (1837 - 1899) and became a member of Arti et Amicitiae (Amsterdam) and Pulchri Studio (The Hague).
The memberships of these quite different artist groups is somewhat typical for the work of Willem de Zwart. As he took the best from both The Hague (the Hague School) and Amsterdam (the Amsterdam Impressionists), people often called him "The Hague Breiner". As George Hendrik Breitner was the most famous representative of the Amsterdam impressionist, this was quite a compliment.
He worked in a very distinctive naturalist-impressionist style, mainly characterized by daring use of color and thick layers of paint.
In 2017 there was an exhibition devoted to the Painters of 'Tachtig' in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, where many works by Willem de Zwart were on displayed.